Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party.

How assets are valued is a changing model, and the quoted market cap of a coin is an excellent tool for benchmarking but can be misleading. Chris Burniske wrote about this on Medium. As currency use increases and utility tokens bring products to market, the economic models will be tested and as such valuation models will change. This could go either way; assets could be either under or overvalued. I believe that currencies are undervalued, and utility tokens are overvalued, hence my preference for investing in coins over tokens.

For successful cryptocurrency projects, it’s ICO is usually the cheapest time to make an investment. This means that we are able to get the maximum multiples on our investment. However, this upside comes with a lot of risks. Unfortunately there are many scam ICOs out there and many projects never really take off. This area of cryptocurrency investment really is high risk/high reward and because of that, we cannot allocate a sizeable portion of our portfolio to it.

In general, bigger market cap coins are less risky but have a lower chance of phenomenal returns. On the other hand, lower market cap coins generally have much more risk attached, but sometimes have the potential for greater gains. In cryptocurrency you must be aware that a large market cap coin can still potentially lose 70% or even 100% of it’s value.

You won’t always have time to buy once the price starts recovering (or to sell when the price starts dipping). With the last point in mind, sometimes cryptos can rally or correct by 10% or more in a matter of moments after a harsh dip. It can be next to impossible to buy into some rallies once the price starts recovering or to sell once it starts dropping (without a market order and some slippage at least). It is from this perspective that it can be a solid strategy to mistime the bottom rather than waiting for the price to go back up. Sure, it is more conservative to wait for a trend to be confirmed, but this method can work much better after a very harsh dip down to a key support level you think the price will rebound off of quickly.
In the case of bitcoin, my personal belief is that there is enough to justify the possibility of long term gain based on fundamentals and first mover advantage. If everything goes right, I do see a future in which it’s possible that bitcoin achieves a market cap similar to that of gold’s, given that so far as I can see, it provides all the benefits gold does, and a host of incredibly valuable advantages on top of those existing benefits. I even see a future where it just might be possible that bitcoin goes even further, and becomes a dominant leading global currency. It’s also possible that bitcoin’s blockchain is used to power many future technological innovations, such as smart contracts and even DAOs, and thereby creates and imbues itself with even more value.
The answer is no, because miners are not solely rewarded by the new bitcoin that is generated each time they mine a block. Users may also send a transaction fee along with their transactions, which is paid out to any miner who decides to include their transaction in a block they mine. Over time, as the bitcoin network becomes used for more and more transactions, it is expected that transaction fees will be more than sufficient for incentivizing enough miners to continue mining blocks to keep the bitcoin network safe, secure, and robust.

In mid 2017, investors were all hot and bothered by Bitcoin. Many were looking for ways to get exposure through more traditional routes, like their brokerage account or retirement plan. One of the few ways to achieve this, was through the Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust. The trust was actually established in 2013, but there wasn't much talk about it until just last year.

These characteristics make Bitcoin fundamentally different from a fiat currency, which is backed by the full faith and credit of its government. Fiat currency issuance is a highly centralized activity supervised by a nation’s central bank. While the bank regulates the amount of currency issued in accordance with its monetary policy objectives, there is theoretically no upper limit to the amount of such currency issuance. In addition, local currency deposits are generally insured against bank failures by a government body. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has no such support mechanisms. The value of a Bitcoin is wholly dependent on what investors are willing to pay for it at a point in time. As well, if a Bitcoin exchange folds up, clients with Bitcoin balances have no recourse to get them back.

Steindorff: QTUM is an emerging smart-contract platform with a strong team and promising future. You can think of QTUM as a bitcoin/ethereum hybrid in the sense that the platform enables smart contracts to be built atop bitcoin’s UTXO blockchain. This is an important technological achievement as it enables mobile and IoT compatibility for smart contract backed decentralized applications, a feature not currently available with Ethereum. Mobile compatibility will accelerate the proliferation of smart-contract adoption among businesses while simultaneously broadening its use case as a digital currency via mobile friendly QTUM wallets. Additionally, QTUM has shifted away from the Proof of Work consensus model (Bitcoin/Ethereum) and instead leverages the Proof of Stake model which rewards QTUM token owners for confirming transactions via “staking” instead of “mining.” Without getting into too many details this method is both more environmentally friendly and less prohibitive for individuals to participate than the Proof of Work method. Since launching in early 2017 QTUM has garnered a massive community throughout the Asia-Pacific and the United States. We believe the QTUM team is unrivalled in Asia and their protocol stack has the potential to become the dominant Smart Contract platform of Asia.
Gold Profits is a global leader in alternative investments. The company serves more than 10 thousand merchant locations, and thousands of investors worldwide. We have merchants in more than 80 countries and investors in 150 countries. We provide investors with opportunities to invest in carefully configured, high interest investment plans. Gold Profits provides investments to global users and payment-processing services to the European largest financial services providers, to the merchant around the corner, and to businesses of all sizes. We ensure that investments will generate earnings stable and risk free, and money moves accurately and securely anytime, anywhere.!
What would be a good portfolio for a newbie today, I just keep losing with these popular Altcoins? Are you seeing just as much significant growth today (like doubling) as before with your portfolio? I need a fresh portfolio today that has just as much potential as the day when you had bought into your Altcoins. Can you also give an idea of the percentages of the spreads you mentioned in your wallet? Also, with the influx of coins/icos, do you think alot of coins will lose value and it will be harder to find the gem amongst the rocks?
Its language choice is what gives this project a clear advantage. It allows developers to code decentralized apps in an existing, widely adopted programming language, C#, which is a huge advantage because it allows any current C# developers to begin exploring the platform, its uses and blockchain power with a minimal learning curve. This will undoubtedly lead to faster adoption and growth. Also, the project has backing by Microsoft and a very active development team. All these features make Stratis a winning project to invest in.
Trading on this spot market is a lot like trading a stock, with prices governed by supply and demand, and no role played by a central bank, like the Federal Reserve. Since bitcoin is not yet accepted by many merchants, its value depends on speculators' view on what others will pay in the future. To detractors, that encourages bubbles. Advocates see huge potential profits.
“There really isn't much benefit for Main Street investors to use the Wall Street futures. They can just as easily buy bitcoin directly. As well, the minimum contract size on the futures could be a barrier to entry. The contracts of the CME are set at blocks of 5 BTC each, which is more than most retail customers are used to dealing with. Even the CBOE contracts that are set at 1 BTC each are difficult to deal with for most people,” – concludes eToro’s Mati Greenspan.
After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

As a general rule, what goes up can come down, and what goes up particularly quickly is privy to come down just as quickly. This is not to say that things will come down if they go up, but merely that they can, and certainly have before. This is particularly noteworthy today, with ethereum having seen some truly wild gains this year, all the way up from $7 back in December of last year to over $350 presently — a gain of 50X in just about half a year. Again, this isn’t to say ethereum will fall, but merely that it very well might, for any host of reasons, and it’s very important to keep this fact in mind and not overextend yourself with investments you perceive to be less volatile than they truly are. I’ll get back to this more later.

Guy Hirsch, the US Managing Director of the trading platform eToro, recently shared his thoughts on the future of cryptocurrency index funds and ETFs, as well as the different aspects of institutional investment in cryptocurrency in an exclusive interview with ETF Trends. Hirsch told ETF Trends that institutional investors understand blockchain’s potential, adding the U.S. [...]

Litecoin – Litecoin is regarded as Bitcoin's leading rival at present, and it is designed for processing smaller transactions faster. It was founded in October 2011 as "a coin that is silver to Bitcoin’s gold,” according to founder Charles Lee. Unlike the heavy computer horsepower required for Bitcoin mining, Litecoins can be mined by a normal desktop computer. Litecoin’s maximum limit is 84 million – four times Bitcoin’s 21-million limit – and it has a transaction processing time of about 2.5 minutes, about one-fourth that of Bitcoin.

People are getting excited about Hempcoin (THC) because it’s slowly but surely starting to re-surface again and receive some of the media’s attention that it deserves. Even though a couple of competitors recently showed up (PotCoin and CannabisCoin) – Hempcoin is actually the oldest technologies and coins – not just in the industry – but in the crypto world altogether. Hempcoin was founded back in 2014 and its sole purpose is to act as a digital currency for the Agriculture/Farming industry and naturally – the Hemp/Marijuana field.
With cryptocurrencies, diversification simply doesn't exist. We'd like to think it does, as there are more than 1,600 investable virtual currencies, each with their own plan of action and often proprietary blockchain -- the underlying digital and decentralized ledger responsible for recording all transactions without the need for a bank. But the fact of the matter is that most cryptocurrencies tend to move in tandem with bitcoin, the largest digital currency of them all. This association almost always negates the impact of diversification.
NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, the sponsor (the "Sponsor") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC) (the "Trust"), announced today an update on the planned distribution of the Bitcoin Cash currently held by the Trust to shareholders of record ("Record Date Shareholders") as of the close of business on November 6, 2017 (the "Record Date").
For those who can remember back to the 90s, when the internet first started there was also no shortage of scams, fake professional looking e-commerce sites were popping up all over the place ready to take your credit card payment only never to deliver the product. If you were lucky, that would be the end of it. Otherwise, the less fortunate would have to chase down additional charges placed by the scammer once they had your credit card details.
NEW YORK, Dec. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, the sponsor (the "Sponsor") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC) (the "Trust"), announced that it has irrevocably abandoned (i) all of the rights to Bitcoin Diamond tokens currently held by the Trust as a result of the fork in the Bitcoin blockchain on November 24, 2017 and (ii) all of the rights to Bytether tokens currently held by the Trust as a result of the fork in the Bitcoin blockchain on August 1, 2017.
NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, the sponsor (the "Sponsor") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC) (the "Trust"), announced that it has today declared a distribution and established a record date for the distribution of all of the Bitcoin Cash currently held by the Trust to shareholders of record ("Record Date Shareholders") as of the close of business on November 6, 2017 (the "Record Date").
The same might be said of speculative investments such as those in cryptocurrency. You can and absolutely should do your part to learn as much as possible about this field, and come to your own personal conclusions on its current and future potential value. However, no matter how much research you do and how many calculations you make, there will always be a fundamental and inextricable degree of pure luck involved in determining the ultimate outcome of your speculation. Any number of future events could tip the scales for or against cryptocurrency, or more specifically, any one cryptocurrency, and a number of these will be ‘black swan’ events that are fundamentally unpredictable in their nature and timing, but in aggregate whole, almost certain to occur.
Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes.
This ability to transact more anonymously in a digital, global fashion than ever before has indeed opened the gateway to some of bitcoin’s more infamous use cases. Much illicit activity has been enabled by this pseudonymity of bitcoin, including the sale of drugs and other illegal goods online. A more recent development has also been ransomware, whereby malware can now cut straight to the chase and lock up your computer and demand straight up money in the form of bitcoin in exchange for the release of your computer’s data.
It took us only several years to achieve the things that no one has ever managed to achieve: we’ve created a highly productive universal wealth management company able to provide principal clients with the services of the highest quality possible and possessing an exclusive set of investment products. We are currently collaborating with about 20,000 clients and opening 30-50 new investment accounts daily.

Cryptocurrencies are a completely digital form of money designed specifically to take advantage of the architecture of the internet. They can be used in ways that ordinary currencies can’t. Cryptocurrencies don’t rely on a standard financial institution to guarantee and verify transactions. Instead, cryptocurrency transactions are checked, or “confirmed,” by the computers of the users on the currency’s network. The computers that verify the transactions usually receive a small amount of currency as a reward, and the process of receiving rewards in exchange for verifying transactions is called “mining”. Mining is the main way how a new currency is produced here, and it works differently for different currencies.

At the time, however, these concerns seemed to have faded from the mainstream media’s radars. It wasn’t until May that they resurfaced full-blown following the publication of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank’s letter suggesting that the advent of Bitcoin futures and the coin’s price decline did not ‘appear to be a coincidence.’ The Fed analysists explained that the rise of crypto futures for the first time gave the ‘pessimists’ a tool to counteract the ‘optimists’ who had previously fueled the growth unimpeded. Another attestation in a similar vein has been Fundstrat’s Thomas Lee’s attribution of falling Bitcoin prices to Cboe futures’ expiration that made rounds in mid-June.